


Color of Your Eyes

by dredshirtroberts



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Ficlets, Gen, M/M, Mild Angst, Multi, color you see when you close your eyes is the color of your soulmate(s)'s eyes, there's no resolution but it's open ended
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27768193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dredshirtroberts/pseuds/dredshirtroberts
Summary: A series of ficlets centering on a different character and their reaction to seeing the color of their soulmate(s)'s eyes when they close their own.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Jaskier | Dandelion, Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Jaskier | Dandelion/Everyone, Vesemir/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	1. Geralt

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the opening line to a fic I saw on Tumblr. I did not read the fic, I was not interested in the fic, I don't remember who it was by, it was nothing like this at all based on the first couple of paragraphs I skimmed to see if I _was_ interested (I was not), but the way that it was phrased suck with me and now it's a soulmates universe because I guess that's what we're doing now.
> 
> This is also what started me shipping Yennefer and Vesemir together and it's haunted me ever since so...guess i'm here now lol
> 
> I wrote these like a month or so ago. I was gonna try and do a few more chapters but, uh...fuck it. These are good. I like them. I think other characters or branches to this universe will go in different fics cause these are all meant to be interconnected/part of the same telling of this universe.

Geralt finds a stone in the woods one day out with his mother when he is very small. It is beautiful, striations of gold and brown and tan and if he holds it to the light it _glows_. He asks his mother what color it is - what kind of stone and she tells him “Tiger’s eye, it is mostly brown but you can see the different colors in the light.”

She knows why he asks when he’s never asked the name of a color before in his short life.

He keeps the stone, holds it in his pocket and takes it out to look at it in the sunlight every day. It is _beautiful_.

He keeps the stone even when his mother has left him on the road to a great stone keep and he is found by a man with scary golden eyes and a severe face, his dark hair pulled off his face and starting to go grey at the temples. He holds it until he is taken in and told that these are Witchers and he was a Child Surprise and now he will face trials to see if he will become a Witcher too.

His stone warms in his pocket next to his skin even on the coldest winter nights in the large keep, it is cool in his palm on the hottest summer days when he he is exhausted from training, trying to drink the keep out of water in the shade. It is heavy when he is strapped to the tables, taken through first one round of mutagens, then another, and another, until he is certain whatever has been done to him will make it impossible to be human ever again.

He opens his eyes when they have finished and closes them again, finding the color behind them has changed. He pulls his stone out of his pocket and it is still beautiful, still familiar, a divot worn into the flat side of it where he rests his thumb anxiously. But it is not _his_ color anymore.

Witchers don’t have soulmates and he wonders if that’s why the only color he sees behind his eyes is gold instead of the tiger’s eye brown he’d seen in Eskel’s eyes before the trials.


	2. Eskel

Eskel saw shades of green everywhere he went, grasses, trees, the deepest parts of lakes, algae. Sometimes even the sky seemed to have a greenish cast to it, though he was sure it wasn’t anything.

Nothing compared to the green behind his eyelids when he laid down for sleep at night. His secret, the one thing he never told the other boys taken from their families to become Witchers. Witchers don’t have soulmates. Eskel would probably never meet the person who had eyes the same color as the back of his eyelids.

Well, he’d thought he’d never meet them.

Geralt’s eyes were pine green, emerald bright, and deep as the deepest lake Eskel had ever seen in his short life. Fierce and brilliant and sharp, clever and brave and Eskel was so proud that _this_ , this was _his_ soulmate.

The mutagens took the green from him. It was gone from behind his eyelids, the world seemed grey and pale. Geralt was experimented on and Eskel was sure he would never see green again.

He hated that he was right when he saw the bright gold of Geralt’s eyes, the same color as his own - the gold of sunlight at dawn, the gold he saw behind his eyelids and he knew that was why the Witchers said they didn’t have soulmates. Their soulmates were burned out for gold, gold, gold, gold.

Eskel _hated_ gold.

Eskel missed green.


	3. Vesemir

Vesemir has never beheld color behind his eyes. When he was younger, less world-weary, less jaded and scarred and broken, he thought perhaps the color was just the darkest brown or blue, a rarity but not unheard of.

It took many decades before he knew he was like all other Witchers: destined to never have a soulmate. All of the remainder of his innocence died that day.

Then, one day, 200 years into his existence on the planet, shortly after _his_ child surprise is given additional mutagens, his innocence burned from him like the green of his eyes, he sees the purest violet when he closes his eyes.

He doesn't know what it means. There are no books to read on this, it has never happened before according to history.

Vesemir is 300 when he meets Geralt’s witch, old by even Witcher standards. She helps raise Geralt’s child surprise, the girl Vesemir sees as a daughter. She is bound by destiny - by a desperate man's wish - to Geralt who Vesemir sees as a son.

Vesemir wonders if maybe, in the end, nearly 100 years after seeing violet for the first time, the Witchers were right.

Witchers have no soulmates.


	4. Jaskier

Jaskier closes his eyes and is delighted every time there’s a new color. The same ones show up from time to time and he goes to revisit his old flames, holders of his heart, companions to his soul. Men, women, neither, both, nothing at all but a person with a heart and a soul to match his own - sometimes for a night only, sometimes again _and again, and again, and again._

He sees a lot of brown, shades from the deepest darkest earth to nearly amber, tans and duns and mahogany and beech. He is startled when he first sees gold - he hasn’t met a Witcher yet, but he will, in Posada, lute in hand and bread in his pants. He will smile and flirt and the large man will grump at him, his eyes the color of sunsets, of the last coin left on the table for him, of the goldenrod in the fields and the flowers Jaskier has named himself after.

He is more startled when he sees purple - a violent, bright shade, like so many violets, lavender, dark irises and royal gowns. He opens his eyes to stare at them and is distraught when Destiny shows him a woman desperate, on the edge of herself, reaching and reaching and reaching to be _worth_ something to someone, to be _loved_.

He doesn’t know how to let her know _he_ can love her, if she wants - and then she’s threatening his most prized possession aside from his hands and his lute and requesting he make a final wish but he’s pretty sure the djinn didn’t listen to him anyway so he’s not sure what to do and he thinks maybe the violet is gone the fastest of all the colors he’s ever seen behind his eyes.

(It comes back sometimes. She doesn’t.)

There are different shades of gold, not always the same as the yellow behind Geralt’s grouching face. He sees bright green once and he smiles kindly at the young princess he’s playing for - different kind of soulmate this time, and he’s not used to it but he’s nothing if not adaptable. 

(Sometimes this happens, he’s heard. Where your soulmate is platonic, familial, entirely separate from romance - it’s happened once or twice, even. A few of his soulmates over the years have returned to him again and again but are still only his closest and dearest friends, only those who know his heart but never anything more than that. This is the first time the child is young enough to be his own child and he takes great pains to visit Cintra every winter for years and years - and then the green is gone and he wonders if Destiny finally came and pulled Geralt to her, or if she fell alongside Cintra.)

He falls hard and fast every time he meets a soulmate, loving them to the very core of his being because _how could he not?_ They are his _mate_ , the match to his soul, whatever shape that might be at the time.

(The leshen was...unexpected. But Jaskier is nothing if he isn’t willing to take on anything.)


	5. Yennefer

Yennefer has only ever seen gold behind her eyes. A sea of it, like fields of wheat dry in the late summer and blowing in the wind. She feels as though she is drowning in gold when she sleeps, and it is the knowledge that _someone_ out there will love her despite her twisted form that keeps her alive through being mistreated, sold to a woman for four marks, taken to a school filled with people she will come to hate in turns, taught magic, her attempts on her own life, the attempts of the world to silence her, her ascension.

When they take her choices from her, when the world - when _Destiny_ \- takes her choices from her time and time again, when she has never seen the color gold in the same shade as the color behind her eyes and it’s been twenty, thirty, fifty, _seventy_ years, she despises the color. Hates falling asleep to be reminded of what she cannot have. What she never will be to anyone.

She sees gold in a close enough shade when the Witcher with the snow-white hair brings his bard to her door step for her to save. The djinn, the wishes, they are secondary to what she feels in her heart when she sees his eyes. Gold. Gold like the dying light of sun during harvest, gold like the color of a lion’s pelt, gold like the riches she has seen on every noble king and asshole mage and everyone who thinks they are anyone in her many long years. She hopes again.

He binds her to him through his wish and she doesn’t know for a long time after. When she learns he does not see the color of _her_ eyes when he goes to sleep at night, when she knows that this is not her soulmate - because how could Destiny be so cruel to tie her to a soulmate from birth who has another soulmate? - she despairs. She lashes out, cruel against one of the few friends she has made in her long life. She hides.

He finds her after he finds his Child Surprise, begging her to help him. She almost says no.

In the end, Ciri becomes her daughter in all but blood. Her little ugly one who is the most beautiful little girl-teenager-young woman that Yennefer has ever seen in her life. She thinks maybe if Geralt is her soulmate after all, even if he is destined to find another, or no one at all, she can live with that because he brought her what she wanted most in this world - someone who _loves_ her.

If she notices that all witchers share the same eye color, that the ones who land on her the most are the eyes of Geralt’s own mentor, kind in his own way, gruff and harsh and wind beaten and weary, well...It is only gratitude in his eyes when he looks at her, she is sure, for caring for the girl who is granddaughter to him in all but blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaand that's the last one. that's all i've got.
> 
> Personally? they all end up confessing to each other and living happily ever after i just haven't written it yet. But you feel free to imagine whatever you want! Angst is cathartic sometimes and if you need a smidge extra i won't blame you.
> 
> I'm posting these while sick with the flu so like. they're not edited. But they're up and that's that on that. I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> Come shout at me on Tumblr [@dredshirtroberts](dredshirtroberts.tumblr.com) and tell me how much i broke your heart :P


End file.
